The Star of Mangaroon is Au dominant epithermal in roughly the centre an interpreted felsic intrusion (Yellow square)
Surrounding the Star is an abundance of small, structurally controlled epithermal signature base metal dominant prospects as per the GSWA 100k sheet below. Cu and Pb everywhere, but often associated with very high grade Au
From a cursory glance, one would think The Star is a Au/Ag exception to the base metal signature of the other prospects...
As others also noted, DRE only released Au-soil maps, because obviously when your selling a gold pitch you don;t want to emphasise the project is maybe more a base metal one. Soil geochem with Cu, Pb etc would have painted quite the different picture.. as it has at Tiger.
Base metal with gold is not good when you want to run it through a CIP plant, like Blackcats Paulsens plant. Paulsens has trouble with Cu robbing Au from recovery and are trying to get Cu <300ppm in the ore feed. last thing they want is high copper contamination toll feed from DRE stuffing up the plant (The Star looks low Cu and so might be a sweet toll feed?).
Base metal also means a different interp to the orogenic epithermal intrusive related model the Star is painted as and new prospects like Tiger etc were being hoped for. Many a copper-stained gossan exists in all sorts of orogenic, intrusive, hydrothermally altered, metamorphic terrains as it sweats out of the host rock and re-precipitates as sulphides in small structural dilation zones. They are fairly ubiquitous but rarely economic beyond old time prospectors.
This release looks like another of those confessions when keeping up appearances and delaying results is no longer tenable.. thus, goodbye Mangaroon structurally controlled gold (stacked NW-WNW mineralisation everywhere) and hello VMS Tiger.
(20min delay)